OK…So Miles and Paul got all their guitars done and now it was time for Bass. Andy, Echo Division’s bass player came in ready to go with a solid Fender P-Bass. No crazy electronics or bells & whistles, just a good ol’ Fender P-Bass. You could use it to row down a river if you needed to.

I had an idea of how I wanted to record the bass. Usually I just use a DI and an amp (which I usually favor), but it this case I wanted to go a little deeper. I love using the Aurora Audio DI that is in the GTQ2 and GTP8 for bass. It’s very full frequency and kinda modern, actually. This is why I use it for Keys and Guitar when I need to as well. Sometimes, I also use a traditional Countryman DI…well…because it’s more retro sounding, I suppose. It’s just has that thing when I need that traditional sound. I also just go with my mood I guess. Ridiculous, I know.

For starters, I needed to split the bass signal though something so each DI would get optimal signal. I didn’t want to lose anything in a passive split, so I grabbed my Tonebone Class A splitter. The thing sounds great and I use it all the time for guitars as well.

The Purell in the pic kept us all clean and the Tonebone was routed to the Countryman and the Aurora DI. Since I seem to have a lot of pictures of the bass setup, here’s the Countryman.

Cool huh? So, I tracked the two DI sound with no EQ and no Compression and we proceeded to get a great performance from Andy. The following day, I started going crazy with stuff. First thing I did was compress the bass DI tracks with the Aurora GTC2. I still am lucky enough to have the original hand-built one that Geoff made to make sure all the stereo linking and everything worked properly before unleashing it on the world. Just so you know, the original prototype that Geoff still has is only one channel. So this one was made with the metal work and everything to make sure everyone approved. Anywhoo, I compressed the DIs in Opto mode and recorded it back into Pro Tools. Here are the tools I used:

Once I did that, I then ran the uncompressed Aurora DI to a 1970s Ampeg SVT head and cab. I dialed in a nice warm sound and with the Aurora EQ got some extra beef and clarity in there as well. Oh, I did use a Neumann Fet 47. I was going for a rounder sound, so this fit the bill perfectly. Of course this went through the GTC2 as well. Pictures? Of course I have pictures.

See how my flashlight makes for cool lighting effects? I was getting accidentally creative. From there, I did ONE MORE reamp and that was with the Sans Amp Bass Driver DI for a thinner fuzz kind of grind that the band wanted to have in case the needed it later. Again the Aurora Pre and GTC2 were used and the Sans ended up sounding quite nicely when blended it to everything else. Sans picture comin’ atcha live:

Did I need SIX bass tracks here? No. But I wanted to show the Aurora versatility and since I had the time to have 3 DIs, an amp, and choices to compress or not compress, I figured, “Why not?’

Next up, vocals and beyond…plus anything else I forgot like more pictures.